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Welcome back to False Flag! The Atlantic recently profiled right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec with a headline that declared him Charlie Kirk’s heir apparent and MAGA’s “next top influencer.”
I’m not so sure. While the article is worthwhile for tracking how one of Pizzagate’s most prominent promoters could rise to be a sort of White House adviser, I think Posobiec lacks the finesse or likability that Kirk enjoyed. But if not Posobiec, who else? Laura Loomer has no problem getting people fired or stopping injured Gazan children from receiving American medical treatment, but her stances are too extreme for even this administration to publicly embrace. Same with Candace Owens, who is mired in the world of conspiracy theories.
That leaves Benny Johnson, the disgraced BuzzFeed plagiarist and former host of a Russian propaganda outlet. Johnson’s AI video of himself as Batman beating up immigrants showed a truly deranged devotion to ICE, while his wife, “Nurse Kate,” has upped her own social media profile in a way that demonstrates the sort of family-values panache that becoming a modern conservative media pundit demands.
But don’t expect Johnson to attain Kirkian status without a fight. Indeed, the battle over Kirk’s legacy appears only to be intensifying, as I cover in today’s newsletter. These are tumultuous times on the right! And I wouldn’t be able to cover them at all without Bulwark+ subscribers. Consider signing up!
–Will
The Civil War Over Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Has Gotten Even Uglier
Right-wing personalities are feuding over the decision to invite Tucker Carlson to TPUSA’s annual confab.
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SHORTLY BEFORE HIS MURDER in September, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was facing a thorny question: whether or not to invite Tucker Carlson, an increasingly vocal critic of both America’s support for Israel and some prominent Jewish conservative donors, to his organization’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix.
“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk wrote, according to text message screenshots released earlier this month by podcaster Candace Owens, which were later confirmed as real by TPUSA itself. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker.”
“Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,” Kirk added in a follow-up text message.
AmericaFest is now less than two months away, set to start on December 18. And with Carlson—as well other critics of the traditional Republican stance on support for Israel, like Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec—still on the bill, the tensions Kirk was dealing with privately are spilling out into public.
A fight has begun raging in conservative circles over the composition of the upcoming TPUSA summit and, more broadly, what it might mean for Kirk’s legacy.
It was ignited last week by a tweet from Washington Examiner contributor Kimberly Ross.
“No, it’s not good that Carlson, Bannon, Posobiec, and [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton are speaking at TPUSA’s AmFest in December,” Ross wrote. “It’s bad, actually. The cancer should be cut out.”
But the clash really took off when ...